Boxing: Kings crowning glory

Thirty years ago, shortly before dawn on a wet night in a crumbling stadium in Zaire, Don Kings dream came true

“Abraham and Moses, they had to get away. They didn’t stay. God called them, so they went out to do His bidding.”

Don King is holding a small American flag in one hand and a crucifix that is hanging from a chain around his neck in the other. His booming voice is attracting a small crowd off a pavement in San Diego to a quasi-Sermon on the Mount as he explains how he brought the Rumble in the Jungle to Kinshasa, the capital city of what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“I’m like a voice crying in the wilderness, ‘There is one who is coming who is greater than I, and I am not worthy of tying his shoelace. Come and follow me. We have to go to the Promised Land . . . so who’s coming?’ And, like manna from heaven, the people came, to the middle of